Seeds and other parts of plants are still used by Indigenous people in food preparation and medicines.

HEALTH

Indigenous people survived with good health for more than 60,000 years on a diet based on food hunted and gathered from the land and by following their own health regimes. Food was minimally processed and western products, such as alcohol, were yet to arrive.

Since European settlement the Indigenous population has experienced considerable ill health, caused by introduced diseases,
western foods, drugs and alcohol.

Now Indigenous people live on average 20 years less than other Australians, infant deaths are four times higher, hospitalisation three times higher and death rates four times higher.

Heart and liver diseases are more common and diabetes and hepatitis B are widespread.

Indigenous babies are born smaller and have less chance of survival, and tend to have more health problems than other babies.

The eye disease, glaucoma, is a serious health problem in many communities, and social ills such as alcoholism, petrol sniffing and drug abuse are threatening the physical, emotional, mental and social well-being of Indigenous people throughout the continent.

The reasons for this are complex but poverty, poor water and housing, despair and lack of education have all contributed to the downturn in Indigenous health.

The quest for solutions is the source of ongoing study and public debate. Indigenous lobby groups, academics, politicians and community Elders continue to work with non-Indigenous bureaucracy to overcome Indigenous health problems.

Before white settlement, Indigenous people moved around the country to find food and were lean, tough, fit and free of disease.

With the introduction of the Aborigines Act 1905, Indigenous people were sent into overcrowded reserves with poor water supplies and housing. They were fed rations dominated by flour and sugar that caused them to become overweight and ill. The distribution of blankets in the early settlement days also inadvertently spread disease.

Indigenous Medicine

Sophisticated medical treatments were the province of the ‘clever man’ or ‘clever woman’, who was trained from an early age, often in isolation and with absolute secrecy.

Bush medicines could be used or, if it was considered the illness was the result of a bad spirit, the remedy would be to ‘sing’ or chant a remedy. In this case the ‘clever’ person’s power was vital in the treatment of illness, with the power passed from healer to the sick.

Some traditional Indigenous health treatments include:

• Patients were often ‘smoked’ – smoke from a particular plant was blown over them
• Aromatic oils rubbed over the skin to relieve rheumatism and other muscular pains
• Warm paddymelon juice rubbed on skin to relieve ringworm and scabies
• Quandong nut seeds ground and mixed with water to apply to skin sores
• River red gum leaves and fuchsia bushes rubbed on wounds to kill bacteria
• Billabong tree bark softened and boiled to make a poultice
• Bracken fern sap relieved insect sting pain
• Cunjevoi sap relieved snake bite or stingray wounds
• Beetles used to eat away rotting wounds
• Emu fat or carpet snake fat used as an ointment
• Headaches cured by tying a cord or vine around the head or sleeping in the smoke of a fire
• Heated sticks used to relieve toothache
• Immersion in water to treat fever; heated stones to relieve aching muscles
• Crushed termite mounds mixed with honey ants treated diarrhoea
• Wild herbs, animal products, steam baths, clay pills, charcoal, mud, massages, blood-letting, string amulets and secret chants were also used to treat illness.